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My Roman Holiday

    This afternoon around 3 pm my mind had completely gone to mush over calculus problems,

and my left hand was embedded with shiny grey graphite recently freed from a pencil that had

scraped out a self-portrait. Earlier in the day I had started Roman Holiday while working out on

my rowing machine. I was about half an hour in, and I knew the movie was sitting unfinished in

my father’s Netflix queue, next to Helix, which my mother had been watching nonstop episodes

of for days. Before that the house was filled with screams from Lost, then Orange is the New

Black, then the food commentary of Walter in Fringe, then The Sopranos’ gunfire, then

Lost again, then Fringe again.

            In my office there was a green plaid couch where I occasionally watched movies. Across

from the couch were two desks, a laptop and a widescreen TV. Most times I used the TV as a

computer monitor, but today it would serve what I considered its true purpose. My mother had

called me the other day while she was at the store asking me what I wanted for food, and I

remembered now that I had asked for cookies. I had a craving for something good, and a good

home baked cookie would, I thought, do the trick. I remember the whine in response to this

request, “Seriously? I’m not baking cookies. How about Chips Ahoy? No? Hm.” I remember

hanging up in the silence after that comment, because I couldn’t stand waiting for her to cave and

I had homework to do. She came home with a box of cookies from the bakery section of the

store, which seemed like a reasonable compromise for the two of us. I had the cookies and my

Library of Congress mug filled to the brim with milk to enjoy Roman Holiday with, as well as a

warming down comforter like a fluffy pile of whipped cream to top things off. Everything was

almost as perfect as could be this lazy Sunday afternoon, I couldn’t have asked for more, except,

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maybe rain would have been nice to set the mood. It did drizzle a little bit and it was overcast all

day, so I was happy with that much.

    An hour later I was watching Gregory Peck stand in an empty hallway, alone, wishing Aubrey

Hepburn would show up from behind a corner and ride away with him on an Italian scooter into

the sunset. I waited patiently for the happy ending. I continued to wait. Greg waited with me,

perfectly still in the silence. I was beginning to get nervous. Any minute now, I thought, but

Audrey didn’t come. Soon the orchestra started up, and the giant script style letters appeared,

proudly presenting Greg’s dark profile in the empty hallway as “The End.” I stared blankly at the

regrettable scene.

    What disrupted me the most about Greg’s despairing situation was not that he felt unhappy,

but that I didn’t have much sadness to share with him. I felt all over for some kind of emotion, be

it grief for him or perhaps happiness that I wasn’t him, something- anything. But I had nothing. I

escaped the disturbing electronic Roman Holiday hallway and took a moment to assess my own

situation. The room I sat in was dark, dreary, and empty. The cookie crumbs and milk swill on

one of the two paper littered desks were a cold reminder of the empty calories I had consumed

looking for some kind of pleasure. The comforter had become a congesting sauna; I felt almost

feverish under it now.

    I felt physically ill, almost certainly worse than when I had started my “perfect Sunday

afternoon.” What had gone wrong? I knew for sure I had done this at least ten times before with

better results, when I was younger. What had changed? It must have just been a bad movie. I

didn’t like Gregory Peck that much, I preferred Humphrey Bogart, maybe that was all. My

mother just called over and said that if I was done with Roman Holiday she though I should try

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something by Alfred Hitchcock. But I don’t really have time for that; I have more calculus

homework to do.

 - Idan